Amanda Knox compared her ordeal -- four years in an Italian prison on murder charges and then being acquitted only to be facing a retrial -- to “crawling through a field of barbed wire,” in an exclusive interview with ABC News.

Knox, now 25, was 20 years old when she was arrested in November 2007 after the death of her English roommate, Meredith Kercher, in Perugia, Italy, where they were both studying. Prosecutors said Knox murdered Kercher, who was found partially naked with her throat slit, after a marijuana-fueled sex game went awry. Knox and her then-Italian boyfriend of one week, Raffaele Sollecito, were convicted in 2009 of murdering Kercher. Her conviction was overturned on appeal in October 2011.

The Seattle native, labeled "Foxy Knoxy," gained worldwide media attention and was lambasted in the Italian tabloids, which gave her monikers including “sphinx of Perugia” and “she-devil with an angel face” and painted her as a sex fiend.

A memoir of Knox’s experiences, “Waiting to Be Heard,” was released Tuesday, a day after she learned Italy’s Supreme Court overturned her acquittal. She was reportedly paid around $4 million for the book deal.

“It was incredibly painful. I felt like after crawling through a field of barbed wire and finally reaching what I thought was the end, it just turned out that it was the horizon and I had another field of barbed wire that I had ahead of me to crawl through,” Knox says in the exclusive ABC News interview that aired Tuesday night (you can view an excerpt of the interview below).

After Diane Sawyer of ABC News rattled off a list of names that the Italian press used to describe Knox, she asked her what she wants people to know about her.

“I want the truth to come out. I’d like to be reconsidered as a person,” Knox responded.

Asked by Sawyer what she wants Kercher’s family to know, she said, “I’m thinking about them, too.”

Knox also said she wants her former roommate’s family to read “Waiting to Be Heard.”

"It matters to me what Meredith's family thinks. ... I really hope that the Kerchers read my book. And they don't have to believe me. I have no right to demand anything of anyone. But I hope they try," she said.

As part of her media tour to promote her book, Knox indicated that she’s thinking about returning to Italy to face her murder retrial.

"My lawyers have said that I don't have to and that I don't need to. I'm still considering it, to be honest," Knox told USA Today. "It's scary, the thought. But it's also important for me to say, 'This is not just happening far away from and doesn't matter to me.' So, somehow, I feel it's important for me to convey that. And if my presence is what is necessary to convey that, then I'll go."